Quote:
Originally Posted by ShellShock
I don't understand the justification for copyright extending beyond the death of the author, and I think there is a moral argument for being able to copy books where the author is no longer alive to be deprived of any royalties. It is not clear to me why an author's descendants should benefit from the sale of works which they had no hand in producing.
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Because we'd like to encourage people to publish, even late in life, and if their heirs can't inherit those rights, why should someone on his deathbed bother publishing his memoirs? Why put his (hypothetically beloved) family through whatever media attention might result from them, if they won't get anything but stress from it?
Copyright is an *incentive* to produce & share creative/artistic/scientific content. Allowing inheritance of copyright is supposed to provide some incentive to publish in a case where there's little to no possibility of personal gain.
(That said, I want copyright lengths to go back to no more than a few decades, regardless of whether the author is alive.)